Engaging Emergence: Advancing the Future of Journalism for All
6:00PM Aug 23, 2023
Speakers:
Ashley Alvarado
Keywords:
community
journalism
newsrooms
work
journalists
stories
group
talking
room
build
conversation
thinking
solutions
part
philly
connections
heard
infrastructure
engagement
impact
Okay so I hope talk to the folks
running it off of here. I'm running off my computer. Oh, okay. I see what he said he loaded it. Wanted to test it. Oh it's loaded on my computer. Hi
Is it okay if I plug in my own computer? HDMI? I just pulled it I pulled HDMI from here Yep. Got the new M two so
we don't need these hogs.
Oh, I'll mute all of those as well as the well we want so we're recording. So we're the people speaking are you using the handhelds? Then I'll move on
I think someone comes to me thing is, it's green, not blue. Oh, you sure
it is green. I picked up the blue one. But I was like, oh, you know what, I'm such a huge University of Oregon. Want to pick up the green ones that I won't stick it here.
So it was really ironic I had just started looking at something Oh, my God said somebody dropped to hurt. And I'm wondering, can I leave the other two with you just to show the folks that SJM Yes.
Do you do need to maybe toggle okay, like display? Okay
it is kind of funky over that.
First, was this the HDMI that was in
Yes. Other Yep. It's not the end of the world like I suppose I can drive it on the other one is just that not I mean, it should work and I do see Rh and Dr. I'm assuming that's the project 20 or whatever connection that you
pull it out and plug it into the other laptop again. Want to make sure that your was still
sounds good yeah, it seemed
to this one.
Right sorry to say
sorry about that. No no, no shouldn't have to figure it.
Out I've been there since Sunday and I was approached by
some reason that one went black Should I just run off this okay so here's my HDMI yours
solve something with
the resolution is not liking both of these. Okay. Would you be able to drive it off this?
I just need to log into Canva.
My laptop connections
etc see the web theory. So I definitely need to make sure that the Canva link to the Vimeo is
out so I will introduce you guys later
yeah so
Now
yes.
Is awesome you made a lot of
money like to better train
people to just walk around and check out the wall. Yeah, they're doing it. It's like a line of people outside waiting. All right. So everybody's outside and eager to come on in. Come on in. We'll start in a few minutes. One thing I would also encourage folks to do is before you take a seat or after you've taken a seat, walk around, look at look at some of the Visio What's up, walk around and check out some of the boards and the sheets that we have up. Kind of take it all in. There's some great graphic recording up here. There's some fabulous frameworks on that side of the wall. You'll you'll get a sense of what's happened and kind of what to expect a little bit for our time together. So thanks. We'll start in a few Minutes.
Right. As you call come in, just go ahead and join any group or find some seats that still available. You obviously this is a creative way to lay out the group. So trust us this will make sense in all due time. But yes, I know there's a there's a short queue outside. Q I don't believe I just said Q. I'm having him British. There's a short queue outside and I guess we'll wait for a little bit more to come in. And then we'll start but please yeah, please grab a seat that's there's a few here and when I said here I pointing here and over there and near the screen
look for the empty seat. If you ever if you have an empty seat on your pod, raise your hand so people can join in.
Excellent. I'll raise a bunch of hands. Over here. There's a bunch of empty seats here.
Excellent. Excellent.
I have a phone here Whose phone is this? Oh, of course Jessica Clark.
There's plenty of seats on this side. And there's several more seats this side
all right, all right. We're gonna still keep trying to fill in the seats. Can you please raise your hand if you have an empty seat in your quad pod? Raise your hand if you have an empty seat in your quad pod. If you can hear me clap once if you didn't hear me clap twice. If you can hear me three times. Awesome. That word. Okay. So raise your hand if you have an empty seat in your quad pod. And when I mean quad it means four
people there's a reason for that. We Yeah. Yeah, we need for people that are group. Yep. Intent. Yeah. What do you want you uh, I'll take away this heat and move that one.
All right. We're gonna start shortly there's plenty over here we're doing this because there's a line outside and we want to maximize the space
Excellent, excellent. There's 910 more. And it's like Taylor Swift tickets. Just kidding. Taylor Swift is coming by the way not
All right. Cool, cool. Cool. It was great.
It doesn't matter where you sit because we're gonna make you move anyway. So come on in fill up the seats.
Awesome, smart seats over there. There are more seats over the right side. More seats. On the right side. Stage Right Okay. All right.
Let me I think everybody's just going to kind of introduce we're gonna bounce
we got guys come on. In. Please. Feel free to sit down and navigate this labyrinth of tightly. Yeah, right over there you go.
I think there's one seat here unless there's this cup here. Oh, nevermind. Sorry. A cup is sitting Oh, Alex. All right. All good.
Excellent.
Versus junior year
all right.
Three chairs
shall want you to join this trading group here with Deborah there's a group of three. One more. So are you
Yeah, you're gonna make it through. All right. The microphones
Hello, everyone. All right. Thumbs up. Thumbs up. We're going all right. All right, folks. Welcome to Engaging emergence. Oh my God, I don't know where to start. I don't even I don't even know where to stand. Alright, I'll stand at the podium. I'll try to stand here
all right, everyone. Sorry. I'm gonna peek in through the two cards here. As we creatively find a solution. Is it afternoon? Oh, yeah. Good afternoon. Welcome to OMA 23 My name is Andrew David gal. I'm the director of the Agora journalism Center at the University of Oregon, and also of gather, which is a platform that supports community minded journalist. I appreciate Asana. Great. All right, in the last two days 120 people. All of us in this. They all came together at Temple University. To address that main question. How do we advance journalism for all? It was hosted by the Agora journalism center and also a journalism that matters, but piggy Holman, the gathering brought together not just journalist but also journalism advocates, researchers, educators, funders, and community connectors. We call it engaging emergence. Because we were expire aspiring to the belief that when you bring practitioners with different perspectives, and experiences together, meaningful solutions and ideas will emerge. So to which to ensure that we have the right approach and the right people in the room, we partner with other organizations that also helped to reimagine journalism that is more engaged, collaborative, constructive, and inclusive. And thanks to the sponsors MacArthur Foundation, the Knight Foundation and democracy fund we were able to make this gathering accessible for those key voices. And as you look around the room, you'll see some of the fruit of that labor, right? We have flip charts, kind of capturing some insights. We have illustrated frameworks and the far wall. Here's some of our from some of our partners, and through Terry Lavon of breakthrough visuals, we have beautiful graphic recordings. So Terry's in the back, you see these graphic recordings that captured many of our interactive sessions. We also work with the local people powered media organization Philly cam, to produce a short video that captures a tiny bit of what transpired and the insights shared in the last couple of days. But before I hit play, I want to just recognize Sergio galvanneal. And I apologize. He's, he's actually we just finished uploading it to Vimeo show it's very, very fresh off the press, if you will. But also I want to appreciate Gretchen the Ed from Philly cam because it was just such a it's such a natural partnership to connect with them and to help tell that story and gave more rapidly put this video short video together in the last 48 hours. So thank you for them and let me hit play and hopefully this is the latest version
Oh my god. Find who has the word final as always, that's always promising. Hey, all right. final final final waiting for that one. All right.
Oops. Audio
what I do, man, so I'm working off a PC and I'm so lost in a PC next, next, next. When it comes to next when it comes to engaging with our communities, and thinking a little bit more differently about journalism, how do we advance journalism for all we wanted to see who else was pushing the envelope right? When we can come together and think of something new.
You know, what's so great about this event and events like this is to see how much kind of reimagining and adaptation is happening all the time.
There's an opportunity for us to really have this community of practice the support network in this way to build further understanding and and dissatisfaction in the best of ways a newsroom across the country. It's
the one thing is really interesting is like our personal connections to what we do and why we do it, you know, so the things that are like what motivates us and what draws us into the work, you know, and how our response to global events that are traumatic how that then motivates us to do something that's on the local to, to affect change.
There's still a role for journalism, the press, we're the only profession that's mentioned in the Constitution.
This group is just an example of how incredible it can be when when people create solutions for the context that they're living in. There is this budding community of practice in this network of practitioners that's actually emerging and showing its power and force. So I hope in five or 10 years from now, there's a conference the size of OMA that is just about this topic. So there's like collaborative
journalism and solutions journalism, and engaged journalism, and there was civic journalism back in the 90s. So what is the common thread? How do
we dismantle the systems that have traditionally done harm to communities of color and to mainstream communities?
I think just the presence here is what impresses me. News is occurring within reach within walking distance. And that's as important as anything that's happening across the country or across the world.
We're talking about certain kinds of journalism dying with this idea that what we're actually seeing is a
rebirth need to continue to find this landscape. And this ecosystem needs to be enriched in that way that we bring new voices and new ideas.
We really are here to really try and transform, whose voices count or read changing, redefining whose voices count.
What's the role of
community media and journalism, like what is our responsibility to be community members first, and then trusted information stewards based on that community membership
what are the implications for what it is that we're doing here and this evolution from, you know, being fed to feeding ourselves we really have to figure out what are the best things to put in our body so to speak, we need to
be a lot more radical. We need to be a lot more aggressive. We need to do more than you know, I don't want to be in a room like this 20 years from now I was in 120 years ago. But I want to be doing something different.
We are seekers of the meaning of life in journalism is a vehicle meant to assist in the translation of individual stories, and global struggles. We are all connected by our ability to create by our ability to overcome and there is something about our collective spirit that can never be destroyed.
So like I said, you know, this configuration of this room, and also as you saw from the video and how interactive it was, you know, our goal is to try to give you a flavor of that in this space, hence the configuration. But more importantly, we want to also convey some of the insights and lessons that was shared and kind of seated towards the larger group. Here at OMA and as absolutely one of our goals. And to help sort of further along we've obviously we're partnering with journalism that matters but pick your home and we're also going to be led led with Fiona Morgan, and as the Alvarado will be mentioning a few things next so as to rato from Las, thank you very much, and thank you all for participating in the next couple of hours.
Sure, we're going on and then as we are doing that, I will turn things over to my dear friend Fiona Morgan.
Thank you. Hi, everybody. Thank you for your persistence and your patience with dealing with the room situation. So I'm Fiona Morgan. I am an independent consultant and I also have I work on local news ecosystem research and engagement. I have the honor to also work with the American journalism project. Just want to shout out to my colleagues who are here from that. So what we're doing today is a form of engagement. This is a tool. So I this is a tool that I learned by being in one of these groups, and I'm telling you about it because I want you to know that every single person in this room can use this tool you can go and do this in your newsroom in your community, in your neighborhood, at your kids school, like whatever. It's a really great tool to use to get people talking and to get them exploring solutions, ideas ways forward. It's called World Cafe. I don't always use that name because sometimes it just doesn't land super well. Like when Shannon Bowen who's probably in this room and I went to Eastern North Carolina we just left that part out but it's called World Cafe. There's lots of resources available about it online including at gather Let's gather i n and@ncdd.org. I'll tell that later. Okay, let's get going. So what I'm going to do is the reason that we're in these groups of fours we need these conversations to be relatively small. So we are going to ask that we keep the configuration of the chairs more or less the way they are. We're going to have three rounds of discussion where we're going to all consider a central question which is written and here it is. What I gotta read it, what does community power journalism that strengthens people, their communities and democracy? look like to you? What does it look like? That's what we'd like you to consider. I'm going to ask in a moment for us to get started. I'm going to be timing and we're going to have about 15 minutes of conversation and then I'm going to have a quick report back from each like super quick because there's a lot of groups report back from each group and then you're gonna move around so we're gonna know not from each group right? Now for each group. That's a good call because that would not be temporally possible. Yes, so we're gonna have a quick report back, and then we're going to move around. So we're gonna have three rounds. This is an opportunity for you to talk to people that you don't already know. So if you find that you're sitting with people that you know, I strongly encourage you to sit with people you don't know. And the general etiquette as we call it, like the general guidelines of world cafes, were to tell you speak with your mind and your heart. So bring bring yourself to this. contribute your thinking, facilitate yourselves. We don't have like facilitators that each group, you're going to do that you can do that. Have fun if we were doing this in other circumstances, we'd have a table with like markers and playdough maybe or something doodle like you know, it's it's not a formal thing. Listen together for patterns and insights and connections and make these connections between the ideas link them up. And feel free to slow down not like what I'm doing right now. Slow down. And, and that's what we're going to do so. Did I cover everything, Peggy? Yes, Sandra. Reading the question again. What does community power journalism that strengthens people, their communities and democracy look like? To you? And we'll start right now.
Okay, we're gonna wrap in about five minutes.
Okay.
I'd like to ask you guys to wrap up the conversations for now. I know they're very active conversations. But we're gonna have more time to talk. So thank you guys so much for it. Yeah, it's great to get your attention so we can move forward. So what I want to do now is do a brief report back I don't know what I'm gonna correct myself. It's not a report back because this is not like a thing where you you have somebody who's the reporter who represents what the group said, that's actually not what we do with this particular process. So what I'm asking you to do is and we won't have time here from everyone but you individually, speak for yourself, what's something that you heard that that stuck with you something that was really interesting and insight, maybe that you want to share with the group and we're going to have just about a few minutes to do that. And then we're going to move forward to the next question. So is not mandatory. If you would like to share something, would you please raise your hand we have a couple of mic runners in the crowd. So yeah, if you could just share something that you heard or something that came up in your conversation that you Yes.
Hi, I was lucky enough to be in a in a brilliant group. And I had this insight as they were talking about how community power journalism has to take place at many dimensions, including both spatially and temporally because we were talking about having to understand context and history as a particular community, but also what is needed to move forward on problems towards future solutions. But as a parent being present spatially and going back into the communities over and over, involving the community with solutions and helping that community to network stakeholders and builders within the community, as well as within the news newsroom and making sure lots of voices are represented in both of those. So that spatial temporal intersection for me was was a big insight for me, man, you can type fast.
Yes, go ahead.
Hi. One thing we didn't decide on in our group I have to stand up was whether it should be free. We kind of disagreed and we're talking about that. So I'll just share that to throw it out there. Should this thing be free?
That's a really great topic of conversation. Yeah, Stephanie.
Oh, me. Oh, it's my turn. Oh, I think one of the things that I said that we talked about came up in our group is that I think community power journalism is not objective at all. It is on abash idli pro community, whatever community it's working in.
And you're seeing now they're throwing it down again, right? Yeah. Hi.
One of the things that I heard from my friends here who are in the journalism world is that this community engagement stuff sounds great, but that the structure of their newsrooms is a real challenge that like the editors that the higher ups are gonna be like, we can't afford to have you engage in this nine month process and send you constantly to this thing. We've got other things to do, and that there's this need to kind of convince the higher ups and the editors that the people who run newsrooms to see this kind of work as valuable to engage in and there's some persuasion needed there.
Thank you. Yeah.
By the way, when you stand up, say your name, oh,
I don't want to be the first one to say,
I think it might not, might not be on it's okay. To hold it close to your mouth.
Christy from pretty, we were having a nice chat. It was smart. And I realized I did not realize this brilliant individual pointed out that we in talking about what community meant we're automatically assuming local, and that got us to realizing and thankfully, thanks for pointing this out. I thought that was really smart that we were taking for granted what community meant, what local meant, and just a lot of assumptions that were getting behind what all of this meant for different groups and just a lot of assumptions that were getting in the way of probably figuring out any answers to this but really thinking about what local means and how the way that we do things may totally undermine any answers that we were looking at.
Hi, my name is Heather. I'm from Route quarterly magazine here in Philadelphia. And we also talked a little bit about who community was we have somebody here from Scientific American scientists are obviously a particular community, but that is global in scale. So we will double tap on that. And also in terms of building up people and strengthening people there's clearly a need to find ways to bring older reporters or more experienced people in legacy media together with their younger cohort and share information and best practices back and forth in an intergenerational way. Cool
All right. Maybe one or two more.
Hi, I'm Lauren. From the Miami Herald. We talked about a lot of things we kind of all agreed that it looks like something different than what we have right now. We talked about the need for maybe less content and less pressure on reporters to produce content, to take more time with stories to let them live, breathe and expose them to different kinds of audiences. We talked about media literacy and transparency and journalism. And kind of pulling back the curtain and letting our audience and our communities in on what's happening in this process so they can feel empowered to participate in it. What else do
we talk about? That's good. Yeah, that's
pretty much it.
Great. Thank you. Is there one more person? Okay, great.
Hi. Yeah, I just like to clarify on the statement that was made over there. What I was actually trying to say is that like in newsrooms, we're definitely short staffed and like we all have experienced that I think quite a few different companies have experienced that. And what I was going to say is that I think a way that a community powered journalistic group can really kind of overcome some of those challenges and still be able to be part of those community events or understand those community events is to do it digitally. I think there's a really great opportunity there from wherever platform that you're at. To join groups online, where your community is meet them there. Have those discussions, be very transparent about the fact that you're a journalist. And then that way that you know, you can hear what everybody's saying, be a not so nonchalant fly on the wall and then also be a resource for them if they have questions, or they want to pitch you a story about something in the community. So for me as a digital journalist and a digital producer, I think digital like a whole digital neighborhood where your community is, is really how you can create a community powered and like environment. Great.
Thank you. Okay. I think that's really good share back for right now and I want to move us on so you guys can talk somewhere. So I'm going to ask you, so I just want to point out They're an amazing group of people in this room. It really feels like my worlds colliding in a really cool and unexpected way. So I encourage you to talk to people that you don't know. There are journalists here from Philly, of course. From Mexico from Puerto Rico, even from Canada. Come on, so I just I'm sorry, I had to make that joke. So please, please talk to people you don't know. I'm gonna have you guys have can one person at each station at each station, quad pod, whatever this is, at each place, could one person stay behind? And everyone else, please move around and find a new place and we're going to be the question that we're going to be contemplating is how do we put this into practice?
Five more minutes. Five more minutes.
What's up
Okay.
Okay, I think we need to come back together. We come back together again. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you guys. It's weird because I just felt the energy in the room suddenly, like crescendo again, but I want to make sure we have time for all the things that we're doing. So thank you so much. So again, I want to do a brief report back and once again, just let go of the idea that what you need to do is report well and what you heard. We I know you guys are really good reporters. You don't have to show me. So what I want you to do instead is reflect for a second on something that really resonated with you and speak for yourself. About that. And we have again, we have some mic runners. We're going to do this for a few minutes and then we're going to move on to the last round.
Coming up. I had a really interesting conversation here with henann. Could you please stand up and say your name? Sure. Sorry. Sorry. Danny Shreffler from Boston, talking with Hernan from New Jersey. For North Jersey. Just the idea of all of this engagement and being community minded being so good for you as a journalist and your personal brand, and trying to establish trust with your own community who you want to work with who you want to come to you. pinata has grabbed a table at community events and put herself out there and said, Come talk to a reporter. I think that's really interesting because she's cultivating what she wants to get across in terms of how she wants to build trust and win people over to following her stories and to be known for particularly covering the Arab community, right. Really interest Great, thank
you. So much. And then we have some people who were at the door. If there is a free seat near you, would you raise your hand? There's one here. Thank you. I think you have the mic. Yes.
Hi, I'm Lance. So just two things. Really quick. One that was really interesting to me was the idea that, you know, the question was, how do we put this into practice? And so we talked a lot about, okay, we want to put it into practice, but what does it look like? How are we thinking about the people who are putting it into practice? So we want this to be more reflective of these communities. We want the community to be a part of the conversation. But if the people in leadership still don't look like the community, and we're putting this stuff into practice, then who are we really benefiting? And then a second thing that I thought was really interesting, too, was the idea of like shifting resources and thinking and thinking about that intentionally for this kind of work. So I think that there is a there's a behavior and journalism a lot that we apply for grants, and we apply for all this funding for like really big intensive projects that we spent six months on and then we put out a project and we're hoping it win some awards. But how can we think about applying for that grant funding applying, putting those resources toward this kind? of work, doing that for six months, and not worrying about whether it wins an award but hoping that it has long term impact?
Thank you for that. I'm going to go with Malika
Thank you. Thank you Fiona. Hi, my name is Malika and I am part of Germantown, infill hub and result Philly in Philadelphia. And I had a great conversation with Erica and Michelle. And what really stood out to me was making sure that to have time to have energy to even have fun more funds to sustain and really be intentional with and actually put this into practice. To do these kinds of listening sessions do these kind of intentional work in our communities is really just making sure you know exactly what you can do and what you can't do. Oh, if you're like if something isn't important, it's work that you know that you can cover you cover that if you can't cover certain things, you don't cover it, you really have these honest conversations that say, Okay, this is the kind of thing that we can actually do. And everything else we can collaborate or partner or is am I am I okay and then and we figure it out. Or leave it and just don't do it because really the important work is the intentional listening work and work that actually comes when that takes a little bit longer that takes that takes these kind of direct engagement in, in neighborhoods.
Thank you. Okay, we got one over here and then.
Sure. Hi, I'm Claire, and I'm with WBEZ. Chicago. And, yes, totally. One thing that my group talked about is the importance of having templates that work for doing this kind of audience power journalism, because a lot of times we're working against models that have been in place for a really long time. So having successful models that we can point to and we can show editors and people who are higher up in our newsrooms. is one way that we could actually make that happen.
Great, thank you. Okay, we got someone here.
Hi, I'm Rachel Melinda. I work at the Philadelphia Inquirer. One of the things that we were discussing was journalists fear of feedback or critique. And what do you mean I know right? Well, it made me think in the early days of my career, the The advice I would often get was don't feed the trolls don't respond to emails shitting on your work, don't respond to tweets and comments. But now that we've turned the tide on, you know, just being journalists in our towers, how do we engage in good faith with people who are telling us what they don't like about their cut our coverage? And how do we allow ourselves to be vulnerable to those people and you know, kind of just like grapple with, they might be coming to you pissed off and maybe not in good faith. But how do we get there eventually.
Thank you for sharing that. I think we have someone over here
how do you put into practice? I think it was Darrell Holliday who wrote this, but journalism is a public good. You should fund it like a public good. That will help you put it into practice with local funding public funding in some cases.
Thank you. Yes, go ahead.
Randy Parker with W ITF. in
Harrisburg.
My colleagues here reminded me that one of the most important things that we must do is ground our newsrooms in values and hire people and train and develop people who share and understand those values. And we also talked about how incredibly difficult that is. And will be, as newsrooms become smaller and smaller and smaller. And we don't have the longevity of people who will carry those values forward. And so as we build new structures, we're going to have to figure out how to really clearly define those values and probably project them publicly. So that they will last beyond the people who come and go through through the newsrooms.
I love that. Thank you. Got Michelle. Go ahead.
Michelle fairy and kind of picking up on that same thing in our group as well talking about seeding all this work into newsrooms and the sense that I got fun some of the conversation here as well was this is community powered, was our original question was community powered. And the feeling was that we have to take on the trauma and the solutions and people are coming to us as journalists for the solutions, when our role is really to help them make sense to be an action to solve it for themselves with their community members. And so that that that comment about newsrooms, being the center of it, give that back to them, what you're doing is reflecting the issue, and then give it back to them. To solve it for themselves. And so creating the spaces that they can do that it's this tension between the time that we feel and the work that we're doing. And I think if we're intentional about being the community weavers and helping the community to help solve its problems, we don't have to be the Savior and helping those communities solve the problem. We're just helping elevate that problem, so they can solve it for themselves.
I appreciate that. Thank you. I think we got time for like three or four more if somebody else wants to talk let's see Jean
if I don't know your name yet, I would really like to just so you know it I'm not trying to be cliquish here.
I'm Jean with results if at Philly. Two things that we see as currents were fighting against to make this happen. One is consolidation is making us further distance from our communities that we cover. And that is a huge problem. And the other is the way we talk as journalists and that can be like a language barrier when we're trying to engage with communities effectively and we have to retrain how we talk and write to some degree in order to connect better.
Yeah, that's great. Thank you.
Yeah, want to speak from all bias, which is it's kind of a question statement. How many journalists are actually reporting on their community? Because it kind of becomes this thing where it's like, we're representing people but who asked you to do that? Who did we say hey, we want you to come represent us. And then what would the nature of your reporting be if it was your people, if it was personal to you? And so journalism for all my tummy what to me? But it might mean that folks are actually reporting on what's going on in their actual lives representing their grandma moms and their brothers and their cousins. I think we would see a revolutionary change in journalism. If we began to look at it like that, as opposed to well, let me go see what they're doing over there and write about them. It's kind of like something's missing an empathy thing with that also. Thank you.
Right, like maybe two more. Anybody? Don't have to we can just keep going. Okay.
I guess the instructions to stand up and say your name. My name is Abdul Ali. I live in Philly from West Philly, what's up? I'm gonna just make a comment. Young, black. gay man was murdered in New York a few weeks ago, and his name was O'Shea Sibley and I knew O'Shea as a young person because I worked at MYZONE center and LGBTQ nonprofit in Philadelphia. And it was a huge story that went viral. It was International. You know, at first we learned that the the suspected person who did it identified as Muslim and so there was, you know, you know, questions about who did it and his identity we later find out that person is not Muslim. But the reason I'm telling that
We have about five more minutes
your clock is ticking. Okay, I'd like us to come back together again so we can reflect together.
Thanks, everybody, for for coming back together
the worst part of being a facilitator is making people stop having conversations that they really want to have
thank you guys so much. I really appreciate it. Like I said, the part that I don't like about being a facilitator is making people stop talking when they obviously want to keep talking to them to each other. And I will say that the reason that I really love this way of having a conversations and other similar ways that we talked about is that assumes that the people in the room have something really important to say that we need to hear and I've one of the things that I've noticed, in lots of ways that we gather together in public is that we don't make space for that. We don't make space for the people who are assembled in the room to talk about what it is that brought them to that room and so I got really excited to talk about this because I think it's really important. And it's a really powerful way to surface stories and to get your community to trust you. So if you want me to sell it to you a little bit more, feel free to reach out to me. So let's do another share back as share back your own reflections. About what you heard. And you can at this point, you talked about this round you can talk about in general, what is it that you know, you heard that stuck with you with something that really resonates with you, and we got a mic runners, so I'm going to start I had to start. So when Abdul shared that earlier about that story, I thought about how we don't have the feedback loops. Because what would happen if the journalists who the people who were filming that funeral and acting so disrespectfully had to face that family or they had to face the face, him talking to them. We have no way of repairing harm. We have no way of even knowing it's happening because we just ignore it. We have no mechanisms in the traditional way that we do these things. So that's something that I'm holding and thinking about and that's part of when we talk about rebuilding new structures. I'm thinking about that. So thank you for letting me have that prerogative to share that. Okay, who else wants to share something that they heard? Yes.
Hello, Hermie and Malone with American journalism project. What I heard is that often the folks in newsrooms who are doing this work, are doing it alone. They are reaching out across newsrooms across the country, finding community to support the adoption of this internally. And so, you know, as a funder, I sort of asked about, is there anything an external party could do to help grow adoption and one of the things that I heard and I'll take back is measuring and telling stories of impact. And I think, funders, particularly national funders have an opportunity to do this across the country to look at the impact that's being created by community power journalism in newsrooms, and sort of tell the story of the collective impact that that's having to hopefully help spur adoption in other newsrooms. So I can't say that I'm going to we're going to do that but I'm happy to take that back. As a point of consideration of how we use our size and resource and portfolio to lift up more of these stories and encourage adoption.
Thank you, Herman. Yes.
Go ahead. Yes.
Hi, my name is Emily Lytle. I am with the Reynolds journalism Institute. We had a lot of great discussions. But one thing we that kind of kept coming back up was there seems to be a lot of steps that come before we even start talking about growing the adoption of this, which one of them is like, how do we make sure that these efforts are sustainable? And part of that which I think Nicole was talking a little bit about this is having in someone else mentioned templates, like having templates, and having structures or having cohorts or advisory boards or having something that can like help be integrated into your workflow, so that you have something to kind of like lay back on but in then even before you get to that, like having able to test those things and doing the short term experiments so you don't just spend all your time talking about it. And it's just it's really hard balance we were talking about of like, being intentional about the work that you're doing, and building those structures, but actually actually actually doing them like, like getting into it and trying things and, and not just talking about making those efforts.
Yeah, absolutely. Doing it. Yes.
Michelle fairy. I'm sitting with two thoughts, one about the impact of our work and communities and that, especially when we're talking about building trust, that we do not follow the ripple effects of our stories on the sources and people that we're talking to and the subsequent ripple harms that come to them from our work. And without acknowledging that we cannot build the trust, to have the impact that we'd like to have in our communities. The other piece that is coming to me is what is the intention behind our connection and if it is extractive or exploitive to create better product, rather than thinking in value added to the community and the final impact to help community see themselves so that they can thrive then I don't know we're producing journalism that matters for all.
Good afternoon was recorded in American Press Institute. I'm following up on a number of the comments, but I think this is something that came up in our discussion infrastructure. We need to build infrastructure for engagement. We need to build infrastructure for assessing what we're doing in the newsroom and mental health and things of that nature. We need to build things systems in place. So that when people leave or things happen, those infrastructure, those whatever you've built, and there's lots of ways different built to build them. It's in place. If somebody leaves your newsroom as a reporter and you need somebody else, to write some stories, you can go out and find somebody immediately because we have a national infrastructure from colleges to do that work. Same with video. We need photographers. Same with social media now, because we're investing even at the collegiate level in the infrastructure to make sure that this work is always done. We're not doing it in areas like engagement in areas like dei in areas like even assessing our work. So there's many different ways I think, and that will come out of this on how to do this, but we need to build infrastructure at the local level and even in if we're going to grow it even at the regional level, collaboration for this work to actually take place and to be sustained.
Thank you. Let's try
to do this one. This one.
All right. Steve, the other nonprofit quarterly I think one thing that came out of multiple discussions today was, you know, community powered has to mean community owned later, there really is. There really is, you know, there's conflicts between you know, with corporate consolidation that really is making this work harder, not easier. And so that needs to be part of the strategy for growing the field. And it may seem difficult, although you can imagine public policy solutions, this is this is doable. It just needs to be done.
Thank you, Steve.
Hi, I'm Cassie Feldman from type investigations in New York. One thing that stuck with me just building on the impact point that was made earlier is we often use fairly simplistic ways of measuring impact. We're looking at a lawsuit that was filed are a new bill that was introduced. And I'd really like personally to sort of start thinking about more nuanced and broad ways of thinking about impact and how it how our story really affects the community how a community has been brought in how you know, what else can come of a story beyond just those very basic, very exciting, but also very basic measurements.
Yeah, I will just jump in quickly and say check out the impact architects. If you aren't familiar with them, they're amazing. They've done great job with that. Yes.
Hi, I'm Adam from Media News Group. I'm curious. We had a lot of talk a lot of really good discussion about the importance of da di taskforce and because of listening to the communities. I'm a data guy. So I'm interested also in like, how do we measure who we're talking to, and that we're actually speaking to like members of our community who need who need their voices heard. But also, this just occurred to me, how do we measure the success of these kinds of stories and this approach in a way that will tell higher ups in the newsroom or investors or nonprofit funders, that, um, that this work is important, and it's making an impact? I mean, yes, there's impact metrics you can use. But, you know, more broadly, Mike's anecdotal experience has been that these stories tend to have less traffic and fewer subscriptions. So how do we what are the metrics we need to look out for these kinds of stories to show that they really make a difference and that they need to be a priority?
Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Yes.
My Kiba Solomon, I work at the Marshall Project and one thing that we talked about was the tendency to have engagement conversations at the reporter level rather than the editor level, and that editors need similar training because of his sub two reporters to convey what they are getting out of the community, then it's going to cause a lot of tension and then it's sort of break down and not having the same level of accountability. So I would love of engagement, editing training.
That's a great idea. All right. I think we have time for like one more. And then we're gonna we are going to wrap up but yes, anybody else want to be the last word for now? Yes. Yes, yes.
Okay. Last Word is a lot of pressure. Hi. Not the last last word. Cool. Okay. Hi, I'm nev. I work at spectrum news. 13 in Orlando. Sorry, I got real nervous. So I think sometimes, like we have a tendency of just filling our assignment filling our slot. I'm more on the TV side and the 5pm producer. It's not just a day that ends in Y for whoever your source or your contact is. And I hate the what you may be familiar with. What happened in my station in February is with Dylan and Jesse. I hate that that was a wake up call for a lot of us have it's not just a data ends and why when you become the narrative. So it's, I'm losing my train of thought I'm so sorry. We're with you. It is. There's the when you talk to someone for a story, it's a lot of the time it's possibly the worst day of their lives or one of it and it's not just a day that ends and why to them, and it's not going to just magically go away the next day or a week or six months. So how do you keep if you're gonna keep the community power door open, then you need to keep going back for that? Because it's not just okay, well, this is just my assignment for the day. We're done. Check it off the list and reset tomorrow. Maybe I'm on puppies at the beach. Like the person you interviewed yesterday is not thinking about puppies at the beach the next day, so it's, if you're going to open that door, you got to keep it open. Did any
bad news that was really well. Also, I want to tell you how glad I am that we have TV people in the room. It's really important because I'll tell you what, most Americans get their news from local television. Yeah. All right. I'm gonna pass this on now to my colleague, am I passing it to you or to ash I'm passing it to Peggy. Thank you guys so much. And I really appreciate all that you brought and thanks for letting me lead the conversation.
Sorry, we have we actually have a giveaway
we I know we talked a lot about resources. I know we shared some resources earlier between those questions. So I wanted to just put the URLs up on the screen In about
five minutes if you stick to a word, a phrase or a question at the most so
gratitude deep connection Impact Challenge follow through thoughtful conversation, connections, insights, infrastructure, optimism, investment, affirmation, community driven storytelling also infrastructure who are the key partnerships to build with empathy metrics community interest, passion being present,
make a template
just because it's always been done this way doesn't mean we have to still keep doing it that way.
Education within newsrooms, education within newsrooms listening, building trust accountability, differences
how to build infrastructure, perspectives investment, collaboration keeping the door open. Let's do it.
Make a friend and honor of Peggy don't leave anyone behind. You came back for us to have affirmation also culture change O'Shea Sibley disruption we get everybody here. Fellowship and respect, reinvention intention professional development never stops support networks. Listening is the ultimate gift. commitment to community. Self awareness are we doing it right?
Change is good.
collective movement,
humility
being part of the community. Start from where you are.
Imagine Better Together
rethinking growth
collaborate with community. Let the community do the work.
open collaboration energy and effort Power to the People. Movement actionable next steps vulnerability connection acceptance
new understanding of our responsibility
remember that we ourselves are humans and community members first and journalists second.
Make it part of your mission.
Beyonce community control.
Care, redefine success
slowing down
the importance of a feedback loop.
Being in community with all of you. awareness can lead to change I think
empathy to participation beyond listening, empathy doing.
Commit to the work.
Don't give up and be active
collaboration
willingness to face the challenge
staying human it's so helpful to have this space to step back and
reflect as a community. Asking what could happen or what can happen instead of this is impossible. Try new things. Listening
love an action
care for trust the people in the room optimism.
Nobody in this room is alone
go well and know that we've spoiled you for any other kind of normal panel session.
